gardening, cooking, preserving, poetry

white leghorn rooster

A week after hatching I still have fourteen healthy chicks in the brooder. You can see in the picture that they are beginning to get their feathers. Now that the drama of hatching and moving from the incubator to the brooder is over, the next big question is: what do I actually have?

Our first blue egg means that one of our Ameraucana hens laid her first egg.

It seems to me that the more I learn about chickens, the less I know. We took the leap back in May, and have been living with chickens for six months now. We’re still on our chicken honeymoon.

All of our chickens have survived, and the hens have started laying eggs. We are still excited enough about our eggs for the whole family to keep count of how many we collect each day. Today I collected eight for the first time.

They lay their eggs in the run, and on the floor in the coop, and in the nesting boxes. I come around, rinse them off, and put them in the refrigerator. I really don’t know which hens are laying the eggs. Yesterday we had our first blue egg, so I know that one of our two Ameraucanas laid her first. Continue reading →